Red Bull Space Jump Publicity Stunt

Surely you have heard of the Space Jump that took place the other day. Everyone has. Everyone has been talking about the fact that Felix Baumgartner jumped from the edge of space, and the fact that he broke the speed of sound, and what this means for science. (If you haven’t seen it, check out the video). Of course I thought immediately about it in terms of what it actually was- a publicity stunt.
This wasn’t just a NASA endeavor, a man jumping from space to gather data or prove a hypothesis. This wasn’t done for science’s sake at all. This was the Red Bull Space Jump. Never mentioned without the Red Bull nametag in front. One big, huge, worldwide, life-risking publicity stunt carried out to gain promotion for the brand.
It worked, of course. Everyone heard about the space jump. It was all over the news and especially all over social media. People posted and re-posted and shared the video itself as well as other links and information. This is exactly what we all hope for with our original content. Of course, Red Bull spent years of work organizing this event and millions of dollars to fund it, but that seems to have paid off with the amount of coverage gained and the associations now connected to Red Bull through this stunt.
Not every company can afford to invest so much in a publicity stunt though. Smaller companies often do similar things on a much smaller scale in order to build awareness of their brand, align it with like causes and garner extra media coverage. They organize their own events, a party benefiting a local organization, a walk to raise money, they participate in charity events by donating money or product to get their name and logo included. There are many ways to do this on a smaller scale that require little or no money. They work almost just as well as jumping from space.
Will you take a page from Red Bull’s book and stage a publicity stunt this year? What did you think of the space jump?